


Opposites

by AutisticWriter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Chest Binding, First Kiss, Fluff, Friendship, Injury, M/M, Menstruation, One Shot, Trans Male Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 15:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7321507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutisticWriter/pseuds/AutisticWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus tries to find a reason for Lockhart's suspicious behaviour, but the reason isn't really that strange, and he ends up finding out something about himself as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Opposites

Severus was sat in the staff room, trying his hardest to ignore Lockhart’s constant talking, when, all of a sudden, Lockhart stopped talking. Severus looked up, wondering what could have possibly caused him to shut up, and saw his face was contorted, and he had his hands on his abdomen.

“I’ll, I’ll be right back,” Lockhart said shakily, and, grabbing his bag, he hurtled out of the staff room.

Part of Severus was intrigued as to what was wrong with him, but he didn’t care enough about Lockhart to care, so he left it at that.

\---

A month or so later, Severus found himself walking past Lockhart’s office, and only stopped walking when he saw that Draco Malfoy was in the room with him.

“What’re you doing here, Malfoy?” He asked, stepping into the doorway.

Malfoy put down the envelope he was holding (Severus realised that he was helping Lockhart sort his fan mail, of all things) and turned to look at him. He looked faintly relieved. “Detention, Professor.”

Severus frowned. “I see.” He turned to Lockhart, who had the end of his quill in his mouth. “What has the boy done to deserve a detention?”

Lockhart’s ears went a bit red. “Well, he was extremely offensive to another student, and I though he needed to be punished for it.”

“Really?” Severus said, half expecting this to be another case of one of his Slytherin students calling a muggleborn student a mudblood. “What did he say?”

Malfoy started busying himself with his envelope again, not looking Severus in the eye.

“He told a fellow student that her younger sister, who isn’t at Hogwarts because she’s a Muggle, wasn’t really a girl because she’s transgender. And then he called trans people ‘trannies’ and proceeded to laugh when she started crying.”

“I see,” Severus said, wondering why Lockhart had gone so red.

“And I personally think transphobia is unacceptable, and I spoke to Professor McGonagall, and she agreed, and . . . yeah, that’s why Malfoy is in detention.”

“I see,” Severus repeated, not sure what to say. He had no idea why this issue seemed to bother Lockhart so much, and he certainly didn’t know what to say to Malfoy for saying something he had never heard someone say before.

In the end, he just sighed and walked off.

\---

Severus was just coming out of the male staff toilets, when he heard a shriek coming from within the female staff toilets.

“Get out, get out, this is the ladies’!” Someone was shouting, and Severus realised it was Professor Trelawney. He wondered if he should do something, and pulled his wand out of his pocket.

A few seconds later, Lockhart was shoved through the door. He was out of breath, and smiling slightly. Sighing, Severus lowered his wand.

“Sorry, Sybil, I walked into the wrong toilets!” He called through the now closed door. Severus heard Trelawney mutter something, sounding less than impressed.

Lockhart realised Severus was there, and jumped. “Hello, Severus.”

Severus nodded. “Gilderoy.”

“I went into the wrong toilets,” he said, chuckling.

“Yes, I noticed,” Severus forced a smile, and put his wand back into his pocket. “Well, then,” he said, “I suppose I’ll see you later.”

Lockhart nodded and walked into the men’s toilets instead, still smiling. And Severus couldn’t help but think that Lockhart looked almost pleased to have been kicked out of the women’s toilets, and he had no idea why.

\---

Severus wasn’t sure how it happened. With all of the students having their own mini duels across the whole of the hall (and some of them just resorting to fighting, like Potter and Malfoy), everywhere was so busy that he never saw who’s curse did it. But, somehow, at some point, a curse went haywire and hit Lockhart in the chest, slashing his robes open.

He shrieked and stumbled backwards, flailing one of his arms as he tried to keep his balance, his other hand pressed against his chest. Severus was vaguely aware of the children laughing, and, to be honest, he wanted to join in. Tripping over his own cloak, Lockhart ended up falling backwards and smashing the back of his head against the wall. Then he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

The hall fell into silence, only punctuated by a few nervous giggles. Granger picked herself up off of the floor, and hurried over.

“Should we help him, Professor?” She asked, looking genuinely concerned. Severus raised his eyebrows.

“I’ll do it,” he said, sighing. “Just back away, Granger. Weasley, you go and get Madame Pomfrey.”

Weasley sighed, but he hurried off towards the hospital wing. Reluctantly, Severus kneeled down beside Lockhart, and checked his pulse at the wrist. He was breathing, but his pulse was weak.

He considered trying a reviving spell, but, as he hadn’t been stunned, he knew that wouldn’t work. Severus was sure Lockhart would come around in his own time, and, to be honest, he would be glad of the silence. The new DADA Professor really did get on his nerves.

But then he looked down at the slashes in Lockhart’s robes, and realised what had happened. He had been hit by a severing charm, a charm usually used when someone was trying to cut their clothing, and he didn’t even bother to wonder why someone would have been hurling that charm at someone else in a duel. He immediately began to worry that the charm had cut his skin, and pulled Lockhart’s robes back to check, not exactly wanting Lockhart to bleed to death whilst he was waiting for Madame Pomfrey, especially not in front of all of the students.

“Can you all please get out of the way?” He snapped at the students, who were all crowding around him. He said it so aggressively that they all positively ran to the other side of the hall.

He pulled Lockhart’s torn robes open and found that his shirt was torn too. With an increasing sense of dread, he hastily unbuttoned his ripped shirt, and found himself faced with another piece of fabric. This was torn too, but not all the way through, like it was so thick it had been able to withstand the force of the charm. Through the tears, Severus could see the fabric was made of some kind of stretchy fabric, much like what the Muggles called elastic. This fabric covered most of Lockhart’s ribcage, almost like a brassier, except it wasn’t, because his chest was flat. Although, now he was looking at Lockhart’s chest, he realised that, even through this strange item of clothing, his chest actually wasn’t totally flat; it bulged slightly, as though he had very large pectoral muscles. But, if he did, why was he trying to hide them?

Still, now he was certain Lockhart wasn’t bleeding, Severus pulled Lockhart’s shirt and robes back over his abdomen, and sat back on his haunches. He was extremely confused. Severus pulled his wand out of his pocket and muttered the counter charm. The tears in his clothes repaired themselves instantly.

When Madame Pomfrey arrived with Weasley in tow, she kneeled down beside him, and checked Lockhart’s pulse. Severus explained exactly what had happened. She sighed.

“I knew this duelling club was a bad idea,” she said snippily, conjuring up a stretcher out of the air and magicking Lockhart onto it. He didn’t stir, his limbs limp, his head lolling lifelessly.

Severus watched Potter move to stand behind Granger, presumably so Madame Pomfrey couldn’t see the cut above his eyebrow. Then she lifted his head off of the stretcher and had a look at the back of his head.

“Just a concussion and some bruising,” she said. “He should come around within the next fifteen minutes.

“All of you, go back to your common rooms,” Severus said, not in the mood to carry on doing this anymore (not that he ever was, but he knew what he meant). None of the students argued. Granger hung back for a few seconds, but hurried off when she saw the way Severus was glaring at her.

Severus got to his feet and followed after Madame Pomfrey. Lockhart was hovering in the air in front of her, his head turned to one side. They walked back to the hospital wing.

“Poppy?” Severus asked, not sure why he was saying it, but he just wanted to know.

“Yes?”

“When I was checking Lockhart for injuries, I saw he was wearing this top thing sort of like a bra, and I was wondering if you—”

“Yes,” Poppy said again, cutting him off. “I know what you’re inferring, Severus, but I can’t tell you why he was wearing that. That’s Gilderoy’s business, not yours.”

“I see,” Severus said, but he didn’t.

\---

As he turned a corner, Severus noticed two things: he noticed that Lockhart was going down the stairs, and he also noticed that a student was a few steps behind him, his wand out and pointed at Lockhart’s bag.

Before Severus could stop him, he had cast a spell and Lockhart’s bag had split. Lockhart swore, and the contents of his bag spilled out onto the stairs with a crash. The students laughed and sped off.

Severus found himself going over to Lockhart. He went to the top of the stairs, treading quietly so Lockhart couldn’t hear him, and watched the younger man struggle with fixing his bag and piling his things back into it. His bottle of ink had shattered, soaking everything else in thick black ink. None of that was out of the ordinary, and Severus found himself smiling when he saw how flustered the normally calm and collected Gilderoy Lockhart looked. But then he saw something that surprised him.

On the floor, among the scattered pieces of parchment and books and quills, were several small, wrapped packages, and even more smaller, thin ones that looked kind of like pencils. He remembered seeing similar things in Lily Evans’s bag when they had been friends at school together, and he felt a strange jolt in his stomach when he realised that they were sanitary towels and tampons. But why would Lockhart be carrying women’s hygiene products?

Lockhart had just spotted him looking at him, and his eyes were wide and panicky. His face had gone very red, and he stuffed them back into his bag. He moved his mouth like he was trying to speak, but nothing more than a squeak came out.

He stood there for a few seconds, just staring at Lockhart with a confused expression and an even more confused mind, before realising he had a class to teach and rushing off to get there in time.

By the end of his lesson, he had forgotten all about it.

\---

Severus couldn’t remember the exact point when he and Lockhart had started going out; all he knew was he gradually came to realise that the irritating git had a crush on him, a feeling he began to realise he was reciprocating. It just sort of happened without him realising, until, one day, Minerva came over to him in the staff room and said, “How’s your relationship with Gilderoy going?”, and then he suddenly realised that they were actually in a relationship now.

But he was aware of their first kiss, and was even more aware of what had happened during their fifth kiss, over a week after the first. Severus had been kissing Lockhart, and had moved to put his hand up the front of Lockhart’s shirt. But then Lockhart froze, and shoved his hand away.

“Please don’t do that,” he said, and there was genuine panic in his voice.

Severus sighed, pretending to be irritated on the surface, but actually, deep down, being rather concerned. He wondered if Lockhart was hurt, and then the obvious suddenly struck him like a punch to the face.

Severus thought about the tampons, and then he remembered the thing he was wearing around his chest and calling Malfoy out on his transphobia and his reaction to ending up in the wrong toilets and, coupled with his new fear of Severus touching his chest, and came to him. He wondered how he could have been so stupid.

Gilderoy was obviously transgender. And what surprised Severus the most was that he didn’t seem to be bothered by that at all, despite never having been exposed to this sort of thing at all.

And they way Gilderoy smiled when he realised that Severus was going to be accepting and not a bigot really made him realise that he did love the annoying, self obsessed git, because he clearly cared a lot about his reaction, and that meant he cared about something more than his own reflection. And that was good enough for Severus.


End file.
